EMusic.com announced that it is offering the ability for its users to pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to its growing collection of over 125,000 MP3s. Users of the service can choose from three different options including:

unlimited access for one month: $19.99

unlimited access for three months: $14.99 per month

unlimited access for one year: $9.99 per month

EMusic says that it can afford the unlimited access because it plans to share the revenue from the monthly fees with record labels and music publishers that it already has licensing deals with.

For more information or to sign up for the unlimited access plan go here.

JOEL'S OPINION
Our Chief Technologist, Rob, has been suggesting that the music industry go with a monthly fee model for some time now. Now it appears as if EMusic.com is going to test out the model for everyone.

I was playing around on Napster this weekend after a friend told me that he uses it to find “hard to find” songs. At about 2 A.M. on Saturday I was shocked to see how many different people were offering the “hard to find” songs that I hadn't been able to find in over 10 years. While I was happy to find these songs on Napster, the quality of the MP3s were atrocious. In some cases, the person must have taken his/her record player and put a microphone up to the speaker to make the MP3. I kept thinking that I would have happily paid $20 to be able to download perfect quality versions of the songs that I was hunting for.

I really hope that this subscription model catches on. While there are always going to be people who trade MP3s for free, there are others who would pay money for a decent digital recording and/or a “hard to find” song.

USER COMMENTS (10 comments)

I like it (9:40am EST Mon Jul 24 2000)This is a good idea that is finally reaching fruition!! I hope it works really well. – by JOker

Bah (9:55am EST Mon Jul 24 2000)This is just another example of a company finding a way to make money off a good idea that is already free. I ebelieve in intellectual copyrights, and the rights the artists have to make money off thier “work”, but the record labels are really just a middle-step that doesn't have to be…

While some Napster d/l's are low-quality, the number of superior bootlegs and rare-sides I've found (also at 2am btw) for FREE far outweighs any value I'm going to get out of paying 10-15 dollars a month. The good stuf is usually illegal anyway (like having a copy of a live recording of a Beatles outtake that the BBC played once on the air), so who cares about the whole copyright/ownershit issue? When the labels shut down, Napster, Scour, and every other free exchange possible, I'll just go back to my good old FTP tree, or Hotline, and share amongst a hive of “private” servers. – by Murkatos

Bah (9:55am EST Mon Jul 24 2000)This is just another example of a company finding a way to make money off a good idea that is already free. I ebelieve in intellectual copyrights, and the rights the artists have to make money off thier “work”, but the record labels are really just a middle-step that doesn't have to be…

While some Napster d/l's are low-quality, the number of superior bootlegs and rare-sides I've found (also at 2am btw) for FREE far outweighs any value I'm going to get out of paying 10-15 dollars a month. The good stuf is usually illegal anyway (like having a copy of a live recording of a Beatles outtake that the BBC played once on the air), so who cares about the whole copyright/ownership issue? When the labels shut down, Napster, Scour, and every other free exchange possible, I'll just go back to my good old FTP tree, or Hotline, and share amongst a hive of “private” servers. – by Murkatos

EMusic will fail (10:56am EST Mon Jul 24 2000)Why will EMusic.com fail? Simply because it won't be able to offer those hard-to-find songs. If it is currently offering songs that it has licensing deals with, what leads you to believe that it will offer rarities? I see this as being either another place for pop-culture to rear its ugly head, or a place to go to and download songs from bad musicians on crappy record labels. – by errorw0ong

Copyright (11:28am EST Mon Jul 24 2000)Murkatos should be ashamed of himself. Is he proposing to give his own work away for free? Geeks are as dependent on intellectual property rights as musicians are. I live off the money people pay me for my software, and I would be royally pissed if I found they were bootlegging it around the street.

What's the big deal with paying $10 a month, in return for never having to pay for a CD again? – by Peter Sealy

MP3's(5:39am EST Tue Jul 25 2000)MP3's are close to CD quality but still not equal to CD quality. I download the occasional MP3 using Napster but still buy as many CD's as ever. I agree with Peter Sealy that $10 a month is not much to ask IF you have access to the songs you want to download in your favourite genres and rare songs but I will still purchase CD's until MP3's evolve into a downloadable format which is superior to CD's – wow, wouldn't that be cool :) – by Lozza

i did it(5:43pm EST Wed Jul 26 2000)I subscribed and am loving it. I gt four albums today that I was going to buy anyway, already outweighing the price of admission. I use napster, gnutella, etc. but this way is really hassle free. Fast servers, good quality files, and you can be sure you're getting the whole thing. I'm a little sick of clipped files, or not being able to find that last track to complete an album.

The site is also organized like a record store (genres, sub-genres, etc.) so you don't have to know what you're looking for before you go to get some music.

Record Labels Suck(4:52pm EST Fri Feb 16 2001)This is new technology and people still go out and buy the CD if they like the songs…they dont understand that and ever since Napster came out record labels went up but i guess they dont see that. – by Insomn1ac69